Kathy Dewsbury White – the Michigan Assessment Consortium You’re opposed to cruel animal testing, right? Then why aren’t you opposed to cruel childtesting? – from the movie A Man Called Ove, 2015.
Kathy Dewsbury White is the Board President and CEO of the Michigan Assessment Consortium (MAC), a group of educators dedicated to making assessment useful and fair.
In Michigan, we have had the Michigan Educational Assessment Program (MEAP) for years, assessingevery child every year in mathematics and Reading (and more). But it’s never clear how schools use the results of these tests which aren’t designed to help kids learn. And most of our public resources for this part of our education system go into these types of measures. And in every elementary school across the state, you can find little 3rd graders crying and all nervous about the tests, because we tend to build up the importance of these tests, because schools get graded on the results. So the Michigan Assessment Consortium brings important professional learning to teachers and other educators on what is good testing (good assessment) and what might not be so good. They also create resources for teachers and administrators to use in classrooms that carry the message of good assessment. Their mission is to improve student learning and achievement through a system of coherent curriculum, balanced assessment, and effective instruction.
Kathy was a driving force behind the development of the MAC. She was my supervisor at Ingham Intermediate School District (Ingham ISD), where I worked as the science and mathematics consultant for Ingham County schools (after working at Michigan Department of Education (MDE) as one of the state’s science consultants.) She has been interested in promoting useful and fair assessment practices for a long time, considering it one of the missions of the consulting unit at Ingham ISD.
With this background in promoting good assessment techniques, she was invited by the MDE to serve on a steering committee with other ISD assessment experts, and the state’s director of assessments, Edward Roeber. Their purpose was to look at various kinds ofstate assessment practices and suggest improvements.
One thing led to another, and eventually this group coalesced into an ongoing working group that needed an easier umbrella organization than the Michigan Department of Education (although they have been strong supporters of the MAC during its development and its on-going work).
I wondered, what drove her to go to all the trouble of organizing this group into the MAC when assessment people were already meeting at MDE from time to time. She got the MAC incorporated and registered as a 501 (c) (3) organization so they could do fund-raising to support their mission. Fund raising usually entails writing grant proposals to various organizations. The MAC also needed office space to work from, and they needed support people to help them keep going, so I wondered, when you already have a full-time job, and when you’re close to retirement with a nice pension, why go to all this trouble? Why deal with weeks where the coffers are low and the staff, even though relatively small, might have to face payless pay days? Why put yourself through the trouble of writing the grant proposals to get funding for payroll and office expenses? Not just the extra work, but the emotional toll of having to tell the staff that money is tight and that they might have to miss a payday? Zknowing Kathy the way I do, she would have felt personally responsible for the well-being of the staff (which consists of a secretary and office manager and an event planner, not to mention her own salary, on which her family relies.)
Plus, given the amount of work needed to get an organization like this off the ground, to the point where it can produce useful tools for educators, and provide useful professional development for teachers, a lot of coordination, planning and foresight is needed. Kathy has those abilities, which is one reason why she succeeded in this effort. Plus she also had the help of other district assessment and education experts and colleagues who attended the first MDE meeting, and who later became the steering committee and board of directors for the MAC. I asked her specifically how she has been able to handle the work load. Other than late nights, they have hired a director of business operations (Jason). They also hired a colleague of ours from Ingham ISD, (Kathy Humphrey) who provides evaluation services, data analysis, and many other professional services. When I asked Kathy D-W how she has been able to deal with the emotional stresses of keeping an organization afloat, she said that Kathy Humphrey was a big part of her emotional support, a real partner in getting this work done and maintaining everyone’s sanity. Kathy Humphrey has great skills, but she has also be a good colleague of Kathy D-W’s for years, often able to finish each other’s thoughts and answer each other’s phone calls.
I consider the creation of the MAC to be a major accomplishment because it involves organizational, planning and marketing components, as well the emotional component. It is similar in scope to other accomplishments detailed in these stories, and I am still left with the question of why people undertake these things – clearly a lot of work, with unseeable outcomes and not financially rewarding. Kathy D-W said she was on the verge of retiring from public school employment, and wanted to find something useful to do, something where any meetings she had to attend had useful outcomes. She seems to have found her niche as CEO of the MAC
Have there been challenges? Kathy said: “When you move a volunteer unincorporated statewide directorship to an incorporated non-profit organization there are a hundred details about setting up and running a business that require attention. All the while you need to meet the mission of the organization and provide value through services and products to the educators in the state. I often question where my focus is and feel I re-calibrate every week. This organization is supported by a statewide board and several project teams (skilled independent contractors) who benefit from good communication and shared purpose – which pretty much falls on her shoulders.
What big challenges, other than producing operating revenue (through fundraising), have there been?
Where are they now in this endeavor, several years after it was conceived? Kathy responded: “We have a working board, about 2/3rds who are sponsored by their organization to work with the MAC and the other 1/3rd are “self-sponsored” they are 100% volunteers. The MDE supplies a liaison in Kim Young, who also helped found the organization with Ed Roeber and others. The current board and every single board from the beginning, have been remarkable. Each board members supplies specific expertise and connections to other related organizations and issues.
I am the resource wrangler. You can under and over utilize your board as well as your employees. Rarely do we underutilize a person’s skills and most of the time I think we engage people in very meaningful, gratifying work. However, with a small organization, people often must do a range of tasks that would fall to skillful administrative assistants in bigger organizations, and often we have to learn to do something because it is a means to an end – everyone I work with is attentive to finding a balance of deeply engaging, interesting work, and “got to do it to move it forward” tasks, I see this as an ever-present challenge.”
“Another Challenge and this is the one that probably falls into the category of major frustration for me… Understanding that I chose a life of public sector work and specifically a sector, education, that has been largely unsuccessful convincing private sector and elected government that we should be the primary expertise informing how to effectively provide an education for children in the U.S. And there’s a dark side to this that I naively only came to understand in the past few years as a result of working to develop the MAC. One of the biggest portions of the state budget is education and inside that budget there are large amounts of money dedicated to accountability testing. If we peeled back every decision and process that is made about how much of the budget should be dedicated to accountability testing, who is listened to and sought after to inform those decisions we see two things at play: pure impartial expertise isn’t sought, respected or used. At my most charitable, elected representatives don’t know the difference between impartial expertise and a vendor positioning to sell their textbooks or their tests. In my least charitable moments, I think public education is for sale. I would like to punch a big hole in this reality. This is why I'm working with all these also-frustrated educators through the MAC, in the time of my life when I should be on a beach up north watching sunsets and reading novels.
Why did Kathy jump in to starting the MAC? She didn’t say this verbatim, but this is what I gathered from our interview: She saw an opportunity to use her management and business skills to benefit children, and she jumped on it. The state of Michigan and other assessment consultants were happy to have her do this organizing because of her recognized leadership abilities on local and statewide initiatives. It hasn’t always been easy, but it is fulfilling. As I write this, she and her colleagues are working on revision after revision of a proposal they submitted to MDE for funding. MDE asked for specific revisions, but then they don’t always answer their phones when questions arise (it’s spring break right now – perhaps they’ve taken their children on a trip somewhere.) Also in the mix of fortunate circumstances, she was about to retire, and would have time for something like this. As with many activities in the education world, the MAC makes teachers smarter, and smarter teachers are better teachers for all of our children.
You’re opposed to cruel animal testing, right? Then why aren’t you opposed to cruel childtesting? – from the movie A Man Called Ove, 2015.
Kathy Dewsbury White is the Board President and CEO of the Michigan Assessment Consortium (MAC), a group of educators dedicated to making assessment useful and fair.
In Michigan, we have had the Michigan Educational Assessment Program (MEAP) for years, assessingevery child every year in mathematics and Reading (and more). But it’s never clear how schools use the results of these tests which aren’t designed to help kids learn. And most of our public resources for this part of our education system go into these types of measures. And in every elementary school across the state, you can find little 3rd graders crying and all nervous about the tests, because we tend to build up the importance of these tests, because schools get graded on the results. So the Michigan Assessment Consortium brings important professional learning to teachers and other educators on what is good testing (good assessment) and what might not be so good. They also create resources for teachers and administrators to use in classrooms that carry the message of good assessment. Their mission is to improve student learning and achievement through a system of coherent curriculum, balanced assessment, and effective instruction.
Kathy was a driving force behind the development of the MAC. She was my supervisor at Ingham Intermediate School District (Ingham ISD), where I worked as the science and mathematics consultant for Ingham County schools (after working at Michigan Department of Education (MDE) as one of the state’s science consultants.) She has been interested in promoting useful and fair assessment practices for a long time, considering it one of the missions of the consulting unit at Ingham ISD.
With this background in promoting good assessment techniques, she was invited by the MDE to serve on a steering committee with other ISD assessment experts, and the state’s director of assessments, Edward Roeber. Their purpose was to look at various kinds ofstate assessment practices and suggest improvements.
One thing led to another, and eventually this group coalesced into an ongoing working group that needed an easier umbrella organization than the Michigan Department of Education (although they have been strong supporters of the MAC during its development and its on-going work).
I wondered, what drove her to go to all the trouble of organizing this group into the MAC when assessment people were already meeting at MDE from time to time. She got the MAC incorporated and registered as a 501 (c) (3) organization so they could do fund-raising to support their mission. Fund raising usually entails writing grant proposals to various organizations. The MAC also needed office space to work from, and they needed support people to help them keep going, so I wondered, when you already have a full-time job, and when you’re close to retirement with a nice pension, why go to all this trouble? Why deal with weeks where the coffers are low and the staff, even though relatively small, might have to face payless pay days? Why put yourself through the trouble of writing the grant proposals to get funding for payroll and office expenses? Not just the extra work, but the emotional toll of having to tell the staff that money is tight and that they might have to miss a payday? Zknowing Kathy the way I do, she would have felt personally responsible for the well-being of the staff (which consists of a secretary and office manager and an event planner, not to mention her own salary, on which her family relies.)
Plus, given the amount of work needed to get an organization like this off the ground, to the point where it can produce useful tools for educators, and provide useful professional development for teachers, a lot of coordination, planning and foresight is needed. Kathy has those abilities, which is one reason why she succeeded in this effort. Plus she also had the help of other district assessment and education experts and colleagues who attended the first MDE meeting, and who later became the steering committee and board of directors for the MAC. I asked her specifically how she has been able to handle the work load. Other than late nights, they have hired a director of business operations (Jason). They also hired a colleague of ours from Ingham ISD, (Kathy Humphrey) who provides evaluation services, data analysis, and many other professional services. When I asked Kathy D-W how she has been able to deal with the emotional stresses of keeping an organization afloat, she said that Kathy Humphrey was a big part of her emotional support, a real partner in getting this work done and maintaining everyone’s sanity. Kathy Humphrey has great skills, but she has also be a good colleague of Kathy D-W’s for years, often able to finish each other’s thoughts and answer each other’s phone calls.
I consider the creation of the MAC to be a major accomplishment because it involves organizational, planning and marketing components, as well the emotional component. It is similar in scope to other accomplishments detailed in these stories, and I am still left with the question of why people undertake these things – clearly a lot of work, with unseeable outcomes and not financially rewarding. Kathy D-W said she was on the verge of retiring from public school employment, and wanted to find something useful to do, something where any meetings she had to attend had useful outcomes. She seems to have found her niche as CEO of the MAC
Have there been challenges? Kathy said: “When you move a volunteer unincorporated statewide directorship to an incorporated non-profit organization there are a hundred details about setting up and running a business that require attention. All the while you need to meet the mission of the organization and provide value through services and products to the educators in the state. I often question where my focus is and feel I re-calibrate every week. This organization is supported by a statewide board and several project teams (skilled independent contractors) who benefit from good communication and shared purpose – which pretty much falls on her shoulders.
What big challenges, other than producing operating revenue (through fundraising), have there been?
Where are they now in this endeavor, several years after it was conceived? Kathy responded: “We have a working board, about 2/3rds who are sponsored by their organization to work with the MAC and the other 1/3rd are “self-sponsored” they are 100% volunteers. The MDE supplies a liaison in Kim Young, who also helped found the organization with Ed Roeber and others. The current board and every single board from the beginning, have been remarkable. Each board members supplies specific expertise and connections to other related organizations and issues.
I am the resource wrangler. You can under and over utilize your board as well as your employees. Rarely do we underutilize a person’s skills and most of the time I think we engage people in very meaningful, gratifying work. However, with a small organization, people often must do a range of tasks that would fall to skillful administrative assistants in bigger organizations, and often we have to learn to do something because it is a means to an end – everyone I work with is attentive to finding a balance of deeply engaging, interesting work, and “got to do it to move it forward” tasks, I see this as an ever-present challenge.”
“Another Challenge and this is the one that probably falls into the category of major frustration for me… Understanding that I chose a life of public sector work and specifically a sector, education, that has been largely unsuccessful convincing private sector and elected government that we should be the primary expertise informing how to effectively provide an education for children in the U.S. And there’s a dark side to this that I naively only came to understand in the past few years as a result of working to develop the MAC. One of the biggest portions of the state budget is education and inside that budget there are large amounts of money dedicated to accountability testing. If we peeled back every decision and process that is made about how much of the budget should be dedicated to accountability testing, who is listened to and sought after to inform those decisions we see two things at play: pure impartial expertise isn’t sought, respected or used. At my most charitable, elected representatives don’t know the difference between impartial expertise and a vendor positioning to sell their textbooks or their tests. In my least charitable moments, I think public education is for sale. I would like to punch a big hole in this reality. This is why I'm working with all these also-frustrated educators through the MAC, in the time of my life when I should be on a beach up north watching sunsets and reading novels.
Why did Kathy jump in to starting the MAC? She didn’t say this verbatim, but this is what I gathered from our interview: She saw an opportunity to use her management and business skills to benefit children, and she jumped on it. The state of Michigan and other assessment consultants were happy to have her do this organizing because of her recognized leadership abilities on local and statewide initiatives. It hasn’t always been easy, but it is fulfilling. As I write this, she and her colleagues are working on revision after revision of a proposal they submitted to MDE for funding. MDE asked for specific revisions, but then they don’t always answer their phones when questions arise (it’s spring break right now – perhaps they’ve taken their children on a trip somewhere.) Also in the mix of fortunate circumstances, she was about to retire, and would have time for something like this. As with many activities in the education world, the MAC makes teachers smarter, and smarter teachers are better teachers for all of our children.
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